Friday, July 18, 2014

Tibetan Leader,
a Red Sox Fan, Knows the Value of Taking the Long View

JULY 18, 2014
New York Times

Prime
Minister Lobsang Sangay has embraced the Dalai Lama’s so-called Middle Way, a
policy intended to draw China into dialogue by softening Tibetan demands.
Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

DHARAMSALA,
India — FROM his office in the hill station of Dharamsala, where Tibetan exiles
have spent the past half-century waiting for the seismic changes that could
restore Tibet’s independence, Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay was reminiscing, a
bit wistfully, about a world he had left behind.

Specifically, he
was reminiscing about the Boston Red Sox. These were not the vague remarks of
someone faking expertise for diplomatic purposes. Rather, he was recalling the
seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series, when the Red Sox
manager took a disastrous gamble by allowing the team’s star pitcher, Pedro
Martinez, to remain on the mound late in a deciding game against the New York
Yankees.

Behind his desk,
a magnificent life-size, silk-draped photograph of the Dalai Lama hangs from
the wall, and outside his window, the Himalayas rise like a great wall into the
mist.

Mr. Sangay, 46,
recalled the agitation as he watched Boston’s lead slip away, perhaps the most
calamitous in a history of heartbreaks for those who persisted in believing in
the Red Sox. The suffering would all be washed away by the next season, but in
2003 no one knew that. “Normally, I am quite a patient guy,” Mr. Sangay said.
“But he brought him back after 118 pitches.”

Mr. Sangay likes
sports. He can explain why: You win, or you lose. Then you close the book on
that episode and start over. This could not be more different from the mission
that he took on in 2011, when he left a comfortable life at Harvard to begin a
five-year term as sikyong, the leader of the Tibetans’ exile administration.
This coincided with a momentous decision by the Dalai Lama, the exiles’ head of
state since 1959, to devolve his political power to the new prime minister.

Since Mr. Sangay
took over, it has been difficult to close the book on anything. China, which
once gave lip service to negotiations on Tibet’s status, has refused to meet
with him or his representatives. Western countries are increasingly squeamish
about getting involved. With the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday a year away and no
clear plan for succession, anxiety has settled like a pall over Dharamsala.
Some activists criticize Mr. Sangay for being too rigid with China, others for
watering down Tibetan demands in an attempt to bring Beijing to the table.
Meanwhile, it is his job to inspire confidence when there is little sign of
progress.

Considering all
this, Mr. Sangay is surprisingly even-keeled. Asked why, he says he falls back
on the Buddhist notion of impermanence. He also uses what he learned as a fan
of the Red Sox, during the long years before the team’s luck turned.

“There is this
unfulfilled desire, unfulfilled aspiration,” he said. “That keeps you going.”

TALL and
imposing like many men from eastern Tibet, Mr. Sangay grew up in a refugee camp
near Darjeeling, in eastern India, poor enough to wear sandals through the
bitter winter.

He comes from a
long line of fighters. His father was in charge of arms and ammunition for the
Chushi Gangdruk militia, formed in the late 1950s to defend Tibet. One
particular story accompanied Mr. Sangay’s birth: His mother suspected he was
the reincarnation of her brother, who had been trained by the Central
Intelligence Agency and airdropped at the Tibetan border, in one of the most
secret programs of the Cold War. He never returned.

“When I was born
in 1968, my mother, because of her closeness to her brother, she said, ‘Hey,
maybe he is my brother, the freedom fighter,’ ” Mr. Sangay said. A sense
of expectation developed, he added. “You parents say that, your relatives say
that, your teacher says that: ‘Hey, Lobsang, you’re going to be someone
special, you are going to be a great freedom fighter.’ ”

By the time he
ran for the highest office in the exile government, known as the Central
Tibetan Administration, Mr. Sangay had a smoother image, one that developed
over 16 years at Harvard, first as a Fulbright scholar and later as a research
fellow at Harvard Law School, his salary provided in large part by a private
foundation. In a suit and tie, he could easily be mistaken for an investment
banker, and he has an American politician’s knack for campaigning that, coupled
with the reverence accorded to Harvard, has helped him leapfrog older and more
established Dharamsala-based candidates.

The biggest
change was that he dropped his insistence that Tibet gain independence, instead
embracing the Dalai Lama’s so-called Middle Way. Introduced in 1987, the policy is
intended to draw China into dialogue by softening Tibetan demands, calling for
self-governance and “genuine autonomy” within China. Last year, Mr. Sangay told the Council on Foreign Relations that the
goal was to see ethnic Tibetans installed as party secretary and in other
important posts in the Tibetan autonomous region.

“We don’t
question or challenge the present structure of the ruling party,” he said.

Some activists
denounce Mr. Sangay for scaling back the movement’s demands. Jamyang Norbu, a
prominent writer who recalled Mr. Sangay as a natural politician and a “good
wheeler-dealer” when they became friends in the 1990s, dismissed the current
policy as “a fruitless exercise.” He blamed the influence of Harvard, saying
young Tibetans who spend time in the United States often develop an unrealistic
reliance on “the old, old European tradition of diplomacy and negotiation.”

“The problem is
that they see China through the eyes of the West,” said Mr. Norbu, who now
lives in Tennessee. “The sheep doesn’t see things from the point of view of the
wolf that is gobbling her.” With his bodyguards in dark suits and sunglasses,
he said, Mr. Sangay is focused on burnishing his image at a moment when
Tibetans are desperate for a way forward.

“We just can’t
afford it; we are getting to the end of our tether,” he said. “The whole
Tibetan world is falling apart so fast.”

IN Dharamsala,
the Dalai Lama’s word remains sacrosanct, and Mr. Sangay seems untroubled by
the criticism. In a recent interview, he was cheerful for another reason: His
wife and 7-year-old daughter, who remained behind in Medford, Mass., when he
began his term, were finally preparing to move to Dharamsala. He was buying his
daughter a puppy.

As the leader of
an unrecognized government, he earns 26,000 rupees a month, or about $430. He
makes exhausting whistle-stop tours of exile communities, listening to petitions
and complaints. Last week he paid a condolence visit to a Tibetan family that
had lost a brother to a stampeding elephant. During trips outside India, he
holds secretive meetings with government officials, often in hotel rooms or
cafeterias to avoid attracting the attention of the Chinese.

In the presence
of the Dalai Lama, his status seems to melt away. Addressing a crowd last year,
the Dalai Lama affectionately mocked Mr. Sangay’s spoken Tibetan, saying it is
“like a schoolboy talking,” and then laughed heartily. The prime minister, in
the background, bowed his head. Asked about it, he smiled a little ruefully.

“It was a
privilege,” he said. “It means he really knows me well. For him to say such a
thing is obviously a bit embarrassing, but mainly, what a privilege, because he
was saying, ‘I know this guy well.’ ” He added, “I worked very hard on my
Tibetan.”

But the subtext
is that it will not always be this way. The Dalai Lama has been evasive about
how his spiritual successor, the 15th Dalai Lama, will be chosen, saying only
that he will reveal his intentions in 2025, when he turns 90. The political
transition, however, is in place. Asked what would happen if the Dalai Lama
died unexpectedly, Mr. Sangay said, “The plan is the devolution of political
authority.”

Meanwhile, Mr.
Sangay offers evidence that Tibetans are opening their hearts to him. In his
office hangs a thangka — a traditional painting that usually features Buddhist
deities — that has been custom-made by an admirer in China to include his face.
He sends out links to worshipful songs that have been written in his honor and posted
on YouTube. Asked where he falls in the hierarchy of leaders, he described
himself as “a secondary voice,” but added a postscript.

“I am a
secondary voice,” he said, “who will someday be a primary voice.”

About Me

Why another blog? Why another site that will largely be Red Sox-oriented?
Quite a few of my books are out of print. This blog should help keep them available.
I still keep active writing and editing books and brief biographies for SABR (Society for American Baseball Research), and have written over 350 bios of Red Sox players. They’re available on the SABR site, and through Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Reference.com, but this site lets me group them all together in a way that features the Red Sox bios.
The Red Sox themselves have been very generous with access to the park, to games, and to historical photographs, and even hired me as a consultant to help with the planning for the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park and to write much of the material for the Fenway 100 website.
If this site is successful – both the blog and the building historical record – it should encourage me to continue to add material on an ongoing basis. That’s how I’ll measure the success of the site: is it something that will keep me contributing?